How to keep a girl who travels...

By Lauren KlarfeldApril 2016.Published April 2016 : The Huffington Post(The following text uses the pronoun "she" but invites all male readers to indentify with the description as well)

​Date a girl who travels they said. Because she will be free and restless and follow her heart.

Date a girl who travels they said. Because she will have a mind that wanders faster than her feet.

Date a girl who travels they said, because she will stand out from the crowd.

Date a girl who travels they said, because she has every bit of freedom within her that you wish you had.

Date a girl who travels they said, but please, know that you will never tame her nor keep her…

​She will never sign off her letters with a “your truly” — but always with a “see you when I see you”.

See, a girl who really travels – doesn’t travel to collect stamps or stories or memories. She travels to learn how to dance barefoot. How to place her toes into sand and dance through rhythm and not through rehearsed footwork.

She has learned to follow what she likes, not what she needs to like. She won’t go for what is conventional, because really what she is looking for is something unconventionally functional.

The relationships she looks for aren’t about security. They are about sincerity.

They are about trying to find a person to share a rhythm with. Someone who knows how not to step on each other’s toes – because it will always take two to tango.

She will always be alone in their mind. And so will you. But somewhere along the line, you will understand that you can share each other’s loneliness too. She won’t need a saviour; but an accompanier. And she’ll need someone who lives that way too.

She will not always want to hear about the successes you had. But she’ll want to know about the failures you lived and of which you grew from.

She will not want to hear about the number of countries you’ve been in, because she’ll want to hear about the countries you’ll want to be in and why…

Because when she travels she knows that deep down she is escaping reality. So, she’ll want to feel what reality is through you. She is looking for someone to give her hope and land back to the idea that reality and routine isn’t as bad as it seems in the end.

She is not trying to be something she’s not. Because she is finding herself – questioning herself – and she’s expecting you to be the same. She is not looking for all the answers, but just for better questions.

And when she’s talking to you – she’ll want to know that her eyes are meeting yours - and that they don’t wander away to the screen of your phone or to the other people around - Because when she’s striking up a conversation with you, her full attention is given solemnly. So, use it wisely.. . .But sometimes we are so lonely that we are readier to fall in love with the concept of a person than of the person itself. We find there to be people thirsty for life, while others to be hungry for love.

And so we end up attracting people that are either drenched in their own puddles of narcissism, or drowning in their own lakes of fascination.

Few people will understand that to love - is like being able to select and read a good book. Some people will pick up a book in a store, look at the cover and fall in love with the title while making an idea about the content.

But other people - other people know the true value of a book. They don’t just stop at the title or the cover. They stop because…they want to read the content. The wanted to read each word, each sentence, each line, but most of all, all that is also in between the lines…

So that we don’t just love the person for the image, idea or concept of them that we want to keep of them, but so that we can love them for every fantastically weird and twisted detail that makes them them. Because relationships are about choices and not necessities. So why chose to love an illusion if you can love reality?

A man or woman who travels in the end will never be kept. But if you understand them well enough, they’ll always be by your side. They will have forgotten where their home is in this world — but you might just make them feel like the closest thing to feeling at home.

(First published April 2016 at The Huffington Post)(Inspired by the article “don’t date a girl who travels” by Adi Zarsadias)